


The Games Master

by ModernWizard



Series: Alison Wonderland [11]
Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (1963), Doctor Who (2005), Doctor Who: Scream of the Shalka
Genre: "I am the Master -- obey me", Animate Objects, Celestial Toymaker - Freeform, Consensual Kink, Control Freaks, Doll Feels, Dolls, Gen, Kinky Alison, Kinky Master, Mind Control Aftermath & Recovery, Robot Feels, Robots, Sadistic Alison, Sadistic Celestial Toymaker, Sadistic Master, Shalka Dorks, Shalkaverse, TCE, Tissue Compression Eliminator, the Domina, the Magister - Freeform, the Master of Games, winning by cheating
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-28
Updated: 2017-12-28
Packaged: 2019-02-22 22:28:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,190
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13176516
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ModernWizard/pseuds/ModernWizard
Summary: The Magister comes back from a secret trip to  the Celestial Toymaker. Alison eagerly interrogates him for details. He recounts his exploits in the form of a fairy tale and gives her a souvenir which she decides to never, ever, ever use.





	The Games Master

“Where did you go? Where did you go?” As soon as the Magister opens the door with a leather satchel over one shoulder, Alison questions him, jumping on her toes.

He laughs, his face unfolding in a full smile. “No greeting? No  _ Salve, mi Magistre; yea, verily, did your most obedient Domina pine for your return? _ Naught but an interrogation?”

“Well, you kept it a secret from me,” says Alison, putting her arms around his waist and bringing him close, “but not the Doctor, and I tried everything I could to make them tell me, but they wouldn’t. And Bill wouldn’t help me pester them either; she said that you must have had your reasons to ask them not to tell. So I even asked Reeve, since I thought that maybe Scintilla had told her, but she wouldn’t say anything; neither would the Stylist. And the geotracking software on your TARDIS Talk phone wasn’t working either, so I had literally no idea where you went.”

He chuckles again – something that Alison, her ear against his breast, feels, rather than hears. “I pray you – do not chide me. Might I remind you that you agreed to remain ignorant in this case?”

“Yeah, I know I did, but that doesn’t mean I enjoyed it. Sooooo…?” Pulling away, Alison looks up into his eyes and starts dancing with impatience. “Where’d you go? And what was so special about it that I couldn’t come with you or even know where you went?”

“I went to the Celestial Toymaker’s workshop.”

“Oooooh, is that a Time Dork who makes toys?” Alison bounces more.

“No, the Celestial Toymaker is an immortal being of unknown origin, omnipotent in his own dimension. He calls himself a  _ Toymaker, _ but, more than toys, he loves amusements, intrigues, puzzles – and winning.”

“Clever and competitive – he sounds like you, except you actually like toys. Well, at least you like dolls.”

“Oh, so does he. My dolls, though, however lifelike they may seem, are inanimate objects. His…” The Magister pauses, his features unwrinkling and stilling into seriousness. “—Are not.”

Alison pulls away from him and settles down, thinking. “Animate objects then? Like… Like you?” Created by his inevitable spouse the Doctor, the Magister is a robot and a person. But, even though he has free will, autonomy, and independence, he’s also a sentient machine and therefore somewhat doll-like.

“Yes, but even more objectified. The Toymaker captures people from across the universe, transports them to his dimension, and then makes them answer a challenge for their freedom. If they play against him in a contest of his devising and they beat him, he returns them to their lives. If they lose, they become hurdles for future raceways, balls for future courts, dice for future gambles, pawns for future moves.” The deep wrinkles on the Magister’s face sag grimly. “They forfeit their autonomy and even their death, bound forever in service to the game.”

“Oh. Oh shit. And I bet he cheats.”

“Indeed. He makes rules but to break them.”

“I see then why you didn’t want me to know where you were going.”

“You do?” He lifts his eyebrows, curious.

“If you had told me, I would have wanted to come.”

He nods. “You would have taken him down.”

She punches her left fist into her right palm. “We would have kicked his fucking arse!”

“I do not doubt that, for you have the amazing ability to inspire nearly anyone to do your will.”

“But you wouldn’t have wanted me to go anywhere near a serial objectifier because – “

“--You belong to me because you have chosen to do so, and I will let no one pervert the consensual possession with which I hold you into a compelled subjugation. Furthermore, he appropriates not only people, but entire cultures to which he has no claim.”

 

Alison lowers her eyebrows. “I detect racist bullshit.”

 

“You are correct. The Toymaker steals from his victims. He is an empty person, forever miserable and dissatisfied. He thinks that he may fill himself and find happiness by taking spoils from each person he torments.  _ I have this face,  _ he said,  _ off an old British lord. Don’t you just love the avuncular twinkle in the eye? And these robes are from an honorable Far Eastern monarch. Aren’t they exotic?” _

_ “Exotic? _ You better have killed him, slowly, sadistically, and excruciatingly.”

 

“Ah, but remember, my dear -- he is immortal.” The Magister holds up an admonitory finger. “Besides, there exist fates worse than death.”

 

“--All of which he deserves.” Alison crosses her arms. “Um, dare I ask what he wanted to appropriate from you?”

 

“Well, my name, of course,” says the Magister with a self-evident shrug, “along with my…” He trails off. His lips twitch, as do his eyebrows, while he searches for the best way to express this. “--My skin,” he finishes, his tone wobbling between incredulity and revulsion.

 

“Your what?” says Alison. She knows exactly what he said; she’s just having trouble believing it. 

 

_ “I drank a delicious tea just that color once.”  _ The Magister quotes the Toymaker, undercutting the kindliness of his smile with a sly furrow of the brows.

 

“Well, that’s just fucking disgusting,” says Alison at last, and the adjective hangs there limply, inadequate to the enormity of the implications.

 

The Magister sighs. “And so I thought it prudent to keep my destination secret from you in order to spare you such risks and indignities.”

“Smart move,  _ mi Magistre.” _ Alison nods once in approval. “Just don’t make a practice of it, okay? Our contract says we should always tell each other where we’re going, and it’s not fair if one of your partners knows where you’re headed off to, but not the other.”

“Of course,  _ mea  _ Domina. These were extraordinary circumstances, but, in all others, I shall indeed keep you informed, as I have ever since we made that amendment to the contract.”

“Good. Thank you. –So…anyway…back to the story.”

“Shall we sit?” Moving his satchel higher on his shoulder, the Magister walks out of the doorway, into the living room. He ensconces himself in a deep plush chair, shucking his satchel to the floor by his side. Reaching his arms up and out to Alison, he welcomes her into his lap. She rests sideways upon him, her legs folded under her. The double beats of his hearts flutter from his chest into her cheek like tiny caresses. His deep voice buzzes against her body; she hears his story and feels it simultaneously.

He resumes, his voice lilting and cadenced, as for songs or secrets: “Once upon a time there was a villain named the Celestial Toymaker, whose power was outmatched only by his cruelty. He spent his days plucking people from their homes and forcing them to solve his riddles. If they did, they were free to go. If they failed, they became his automatons. He possessed himself of their names, their flesh, and even their clothes, for his life was empty, so he tried to fill it with the lives of others.

“No one ever claimed victory over the Toymaker, for he constantly changed the rules to his advantage. And so the Toymaker had the universe’s largest collection of people that were toys enough to do their owner’s bidding and people enough to despise being possessed. He was proud, for he felt sure that he was a master of games.

“But there was only one Master – the Time Lord known by that name. He was an expert in violation, a genius of cruelty, an adept manipulator of circumstances. As arrogant as the Toymaker, he suffered no one to be better than he, especially not if they were better at being worse. He heard of the Toymaker’s pretension to mastery, and he vowed that he himself would be the Toymaker’s Master.

“So the Master proposed a competition between himself and the Toymaker. The winner would be the Master of Games, and the loser would be the Master’s possession. In his folly, the Toymaker agreed to these terms.

“The Master and the Toymaker began to play, and, inevitably, the Toymaker began to cheat. He loaded dice. He stacked decks. He lost tokens, counterfeited chips, rigged timers, moved goalposts, and essayed all manner of legerdemain to prevent the Master from progressing.

“Now the Toymaker expected the Master to follow the rules, no matter which way the Toymaker contorted them. After all, every other person with whom the Toymaker played had done so. Even the Master’s inevitable spouse had, long ago, in their first incarnation. Everyone before the Master had feared the Toymaker’s omnipotence, and they had submitted to his arbitrary requirements.

“The Master, however, was the Master of Violation, and he would be bested – or worsted – by no one.” As the plot thickens, the Magister’s voice drops. He now whispers, delivering the story directly into Alison’s ear with an immediacy that makes her quiver. Squeeing to herself, she perks up to hear the rest.

“And so he did what no one else had dared to do,” says the Magister, tightening his hold on Alison, “and he cheated right back. If the Toymaker loaded dice, the Master weaponized them and fired them in the Toymaker’s face. If he stacked decks, the Master used them as a springboard to launch himself to another level. No matter the Toymaker’s action, the Master violated his expectations. For once in his existence, the Toymaker was surprised.

“But the Master excelled at more than mere violation; he was the Master of Fear as well, and he converted the Toymaker’s surprise into dread. As the two played on, the Toymaker slowly recognized that he could not count on the Master to abide by his ever-shifting rules. Therefore he could not anticipate his adversary’s next move.

“The Toymaker had never before doubted the outcome of a game, but he could not foresee this contest’s end. There was a void, an uncertain possibility, where a definite outcome – his triumph – should have been. For the first time in his life, the Toymaker was afraid.

 

“The Toymaker’s fear metastasized into stark terror when he saw one tactic of the Master’s in particular. The Master spoke to every single person that he met: every checkerboard square, every weighted die, every melted pawn, every faceless doll. He asked them their stories. He asked what their names were, what bargains they had made with the Toymaker, and what the Toymaker had stolen from them. 

 

“The dispossessed people answered the Master. They told him about themselves -- what they could remember at least. And they asked the Master for help, some for freedom, some for forgetfulness, some for revenge or death or peace. The Master promised to do what he could for them with what he had, though all he had were names and memories.

 

“But the Master was a canny villain who knew what power lay in words and thoughts. He had twisted others’ words enough and controlled others’ thoughts enough to recognize how vital both could be to safety, to happiness, to wholeness -- indeed, to life itself. And so, as he amassed the names and stories of the forgotten people, he discovered that it was not just the Toymaker himself composed of others’ bodies, minds, and words. The Toymaker’s very dimension was built with purloined hearts and forfeit parts, and the Master had an idea of how to pull it all down.

“This was the Master’s plan. He knew that the Toymaker cheated, but he also knew that his existence must be bound by rules. In fact, the Master was familiar with one such rule -- that of the Toymaker’s omnipotence only within the confines of his realm. Alter what he could within his purview, the Toymaker could not change the limits of his power. And, as the Master gathered the words of the stolen people, he saw that the Toymaker began to panic. The Master’s intuition told him that the stolen names marked another limit for the Toymaker, one that would win the Master the game and the people their freedom.

 

“When the Toymaker was seized with terror, the Master made his winning move. He turned upon the Toymaker and began to tell a story. He started off with the tale of the Toymaker’s first victim, an old British lord named Sir Henry Vane. He had played for the health of his beloved, cancer-ridden hunting hound, but he had lost and become a chess knight carved of oak. 

 

“The Master went on to the story of Lady Shunli Na. She was the youngest imperial consort to an Emperor of the Han dynasty. She had bargained on behalf of her dearest maidservant, sick in childbed, but the Toymaker had taken both her life and her robes of state. The Toymaker turned the Lady into a weeping statue for his garden.

 

“After the Master recounted the life of Sir Henry Vane, the Toymaker lost his face -- or, rather, the face that he had stolen. The knight of oak became a man of flesh, inside his own skin once again. The bond tethering him to the Toymaker’s dimension dissolved, and he had no time to thank the Master. He only smiled before he returned to his own time and place.

 

“The Master finished with the biography of Lady Shunli Na, and the Toymaker was stripped of the robes he wore. The crying stone became a woman again, clad in her own garments. She bowed her head to the Master, who bowed in return. And then she too was gone whence she had come, along with another fraction of the Toymaker’s power.

 

“With each story that the Master told, an objectified person in the Toymaker’s realm came back to themselves. They regained what pieces of their lives they had lost to the Toymaker. Without anything holding them in his domain, they departed for their own homes. Piece by piece, both the Master and the stolen people dismantled the Toymaker’s dimension, his power, and his very self.

“Summoning his loyal time ship Scintilla, the Master took what was left of the Toymaker back into the universe proper. The Toymaker, diminished to his essential emptiness, was as close to death as an immortal could be. Now at the Master’s mercy, he began to beg for his life.”

Pause. Alison folds her legs to the other side and scoots around, trying to find a comfortable position that doesn’t make her rear numb. The Magister laughs to himself as she fidgets, then subsides. He tucks himself, arms and core, around her so closely that she must breathe lightly and shallowly. Yet still Alison inhales as deeply as she can, then exhales, sighing with satisfaction as the conclusion of the tale arrives.

“Now the Master enjoyed a nice abject begging,” says the Magister, “especially when there was sniveling and groveling involved. Nevertheless, he had little reputation for mercy and even less patience for contradictions and other linguistic absurdities. The Toymaker, being immortal, could not die. Yet he pled for his life as if he expected the Master to kill him, and this was a logical fallacy that the Master could not tolerate. Something had to be done.

“So the Master used his TCE and made himself a souvenir of the momentous occasion. Then he and Scintilla went back home, where he met his lovely, obedient Domina  _ carissima.” _ The Magister’s hand presses against her cheek. “They held each other fast, and everyone lived happily ever after – except for the Toymaker, who suffered pain and humiliation forever. The end.” He traces down her profile with one finger, presses against her lips shortly, and finishes.

“Mmm…” That touch of his always quiets her, so Alison closes her eyes for a moment. Then she has a thought. “But…”

“What?”

“The TCE…” Alison says, opening her eyes. This weapon, the  _ tissue compression eliminator,  _ which shrinks people down to about thirty centimeters, has been mentioned before, but the Doctor forbade the Magister to use it when he was on Anima. Alison has heard of it, but never actually seen it. “Does that mean we have a mini Celestial Toymaker running around now?”

_ “The Celestial Toymaker? _ He’s not worthy of that name.”

 

“Okay then. Do we have a mini Celestial Shitbag on the loose?”

 

“Miniature, yes. On the loose, no. Insert puns about  _ being a little tied up at the moment  _ here.” The Magister unwraps himself from Alison and bends over the side of the chair. He pulls a box from his satchel and hands it to her. With his eyebrows slanting down in toward his nose, his smirk stretching from one side of his face to the other, and his pointed beard thrusting forward with an aggressive jauntiness, he looks every bit the Master of Villainy that he is.

The package resembles that of the fashion dolls that Alison buys at the toy store for repainting, rewigging, and other makeovers. Made of stiff, glossy cardboard and fronted with a clear window, it allows a full-body view of the doll inside.

\--Except it’s not a doll. It’s a living person, bare, bald, and shriveled, wedged into a plastic tray with deep grooves that keep his limbs straight and stiff. Wires encircle him at all major joints, from neck to ankles and everything in between. Threaded through holes in the tray and then twisted back on themselves, the cables immobilize him completely. His mouth is closed, but his nostrils flutter, his face crumpled in a frown. His stature may be reduced, but his rage remains full-blown.

“Hello!” says the Magister in a pleasant singsong to the contents of the carton. “I do hope that you’re finding your new accommodations satisfactory. After all, you  _ will _ be spending the rest of your miserable existence in this box. Even if someone undoes all the twist ties, you’ll still stay in there. You won’t move; you won’t speak, and you will never, ever, ever objectify, compel, or play with, steal from, or appropriate anyone ever again. –For I,” he says, “am the Master of many things: violation, fear, games…and now you.  _ Obey me.” _

That command, though not directed at Alison, causes as much of a deep shock in her as does his intimate whisper. It’s strong; it’s immediate; it’s thrilling. She feels like she’s sparkling inside. She has been told what to do for most of her life – by her family, by her teachers, by her partners, by people who have wanted her to be less Black, less queer, less of a woman, less of a person than she is. She’s sick of it; she wants to be the master of her fate and the captain of her soul. And, when her robot says something like this and deals some painfully retributive justice, she feels a little more in control of herself and the universe.

Alison regards the Celestial Shitbag for a few moments. “You know…” she says slowly. “I’ve never really been a collector. I always thought that the dolls were bored inside their boxes, so I wanted to take them out as soon as possible so they could have fun. This guy, however, is staying  _ mint in sealed box _ all the way.”


End file.
